Ideas

[Cam]

I put alot planing and work into this forum everything i could
think of.
My question to you is are we missing anything.
Any ideas are welcome
Do we need more boards created for different sections.

[puppa]

Hi Camalot;

I think you did a great job building this site. My visits are infrequent because it seems not many people post for some reason. There are a few regular guys that are doing a great job keeping things going and making new posts daily. Some of the current topics are not well known to me so I like to read and learn more.

I don't think we require more categories to post. I think the fewer the better. If we could just have a few categories that would cover the gammit from fishing to trapping.

For example, 1 header for all trapping related posts, this would include equipment, all species, all methods of capture of all species, lures, bait, trapping trails, cabin building and maintenace, snaring, bait making and advice and the list goes on.

1 header for hunting/shooting and predator calling and shooting and equipment used for such.

1 header for tips and tricks. This wouldn't be a chit chat section, you just post a tip on trap maintenance, that super handy sleigh or quad article that you can't do without etc. Some of these relate to general trapping as well but if it's just meant as a short time saving tip etc, it should go in here for easy reference.

1 header for a trading post where individuals can put things up to sell/trade/buy.

perhaps 1 header for fur handling. This would include, catching, washing, skinning, fleshing, stretchers and stretching, sewing and the questions associated with the subject.

1 header for fishing-all kinds

I think putting fewer headers will place more posts in only a few general areas which would be much easier for readers to catch up. People are lazy even when it comes to clicking a mouse and searching for things. People get frustrated and give up easily with a simple google search.

The people that are nice enough to provide us with a journal to follow along can use the general trapping and just keep adding to the post.

As far as attracting more people to the site, I am not sure what to do. There are about 20-30 people on here at one time of day or another but don't leave anything behind.

The easier a website is to use, the more people will use it and hopefully more people will follow if they find it easy to use the site.

I myself have visited, sorted through alot of posts that didn't have anything to read and then I just moved on. I personally like the weather posts, it gives you an idea what the rest of the users are going through and it also gives a person a reference to their weather pattern to a year ago. This info might be important in interpreting when animals like to move the most/least. Some people may find reading about the weather to be boring.

I like the mechanics of the site, you can see the 50 latest posts at a glance.

I hope I didn't come across negative or critisizing. That's not my intention. I just tried to offer a little insight into human behavior. I like the site and vist a few times times a day nearly every day.

I hope this helps a little.

Thanks for the nice site.

p.s. having alot of different headers will be beneficial when hoards of people want to visit this site and look up a particular method for a particular species. This can happen with only a few headers if people would learn how to search. But as I said before...

[Cam]

Searching thats the word.
Some forums only have 1 board for everything trapping related.
The only trouble with that is if you were looking for info on a fox
set you would have to look through every post to find it.
With fox & coyote in there own section its right there.
It makes it easier.
Thanks for your reply puppa.

[puppa]

I think the natural instinct of a person looking for a specific topic is to ask the question without doing a search of any kind. I used to go to a number of electronics forums. Someone would join a thread and just ask their question. 10 or 20 guys would take up bandwidth and space and say nothing but "do a search". So eventually you get hundreds of empty threads that have a subject title but nothing in the threads except for "do a search". So now when you want to do a search on a particular subject you have to read through mountains and mountains of basically empty threads with people saying to do a search or they get carried away on their own personal jibber jabber amongst themselves. Very frustrating. Trappers are much better people. They will answer the question and maybe post a link to a thread with pictures or more info.